In Tuesday's 70-minute arguments, several justices disputed the claims of Bowman's lawyer that the so-called "exhaustion" doctrine of patent law limits the control the patent holder can exert after the first authorized sale of the item.

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Drug companies were also concerned about parallel imports: the practice of allowing legal products, in this case pharmaceuticals priced at one level in one country, into another country without the consent of the patent holder.

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That Monsanto, one of the most significant contributors to this research, has placed conditions on the use of its intellectual property or charges for access to its property is neither extraordinary nor problematic: Licensing agreements are complicated affairs, running into the dozens of pages, and they always preserve a range of protections for the patent holder.

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Some generics firms are now agreeing to delay their launches not for cash but for a promise from the patent-holder to delay or cancel the launch of its authorised generic.

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The dominant patent holder in agrobacterium transformation, the most widely-used means of plant gene-transfer, is Monsanto, a big agricultural firm.

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FDA, the patent-holder is entitled to file an infringement suit that automatically delays the release of the generic version by 30 months.

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If EchoStar prevails, similarly-situated companies will have even less incentive to seek out deals with patent-holders, instead relying on the courts to carve out for them an extended period of unlicensed use with a bill that comes due years later assuming the patent holder can afford to litigate for years and in an amount almost certainly far below the actual benefit conferred.

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